Issue Demands to Government, Presidential Candidates : Latino Groups Seek a National Agenda

Trying to forge a united front on strategies for improving the lives of Latinos, national leaders representing the spectrum of the U.S. Latino population Tuesday urged presidential candidates and the government to adopt a series of proposals on politics, economics, education and health.

In the first meeting of its kind, more than 100 elected and appointed officials, business executives, rights advocates and educators from the Cuban-American, Mexican-American and Puerto Rican communities began a two-day meeting to outline a National Hispanic Agenda.

San Antonio Mayor Henry G. Cisneros, chairman of the group, called the session a “call for action,” adding that the issues “must move to center stage in the national debate.”

The meeting comes as the nation’s 18.8 million Latinos seek ways to use their increasing numbers as leverage in the 1988 presidential race. In exchange for political support, the group said, Latinos must be named to the Supreme Court and to the Cabinet, and candidates must oppose the movement to make English the nation’s official language.

Must Move ‘in Unison’

Latinos “have made up our minds that the time is late and we must move forward in unison and move forward aggressively,” said Oscar Moran, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Cisneros acknowledged the difficulty in developing an agenda that all elements of the diverse Latino population would support. For example, he said, on one foreign policy issue, many Cuban Americans strongly endorse U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan contras , while other Latino groups are generally less supportive.

But he cited several “uncompromisable goals and objectives” on which there is broad agreement. Assembled from proposals presented by the leaders and then approved by the group, the agenda includes demands that the federal government:

--Increase efforts to encourage Latinos to apply for citizenship, including standardizing the naturalization examination and expanding courses in English as a second language.

--Allow all nonprofit agencies receiving government grants to register voters.

--Hire more Latinos, strengthen job training programs and create incentives for private industry to establish day-care programs for children of working women.

--Create, in cooperation with local governments, a “national dropout prevention program” to combat the 40% dropout rate among Latino high school students.

--Formulate a national health-care plan and develop a national policy to stem the AIDS epidemic, which affects a disproportionately large percentage of Latinos and blacks.

While much of the Latino agenda focused on problems whose solutions rely on government and political action, Cisneros said appealing to politicians was not the meeting’s only aim.

Also important, he said, was bringing together for the first time the three largest groups of Latinos and forging “relationships among Hispanic organizations and different parts of the country.”

Harry Pachon, executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said: “If presidential candidates are smart, they will pay attention (to the group’s recommendations), because the swing vote is clearly in certain states.”

Most of the nation’s Latinos live in nine states--California, Texas, New York, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, Florida and Arizona--and those states control 193 electoral votes. A minimum of 270 are needed to win the presidency.

In a speech before the Latino leaders, California Sen. Pete Wilson, a Republican, called on his mostly Democratic listeners to avoid allowing themselves to be “taken for granted” by the Democratic Party because “then you get taken. You diminish your influence and you dilute your power.”